Just a heads up, the next two chapters are going to be very exposition heavy as Mustang gets Shiro caught up on the basics of what he needs to know to blend in with Red Rising society.

1/15/18: Got an early copy of Iron Gold, which confirmed Hyperion as the name of Luna's capital City

Chapter 2: Knowledge is Power:

Hyperion

Luna

October 15th, 2840

Virginia au Augustus didn't return until the next day. Shiro assumed she was busy gathering resources to help him figure out how to get home, and that she also wanted to give him time to adjust to his situation after being out cold for two days. With nothing better to do to pass the time, Shiro climbed out of bed and started exploring the rest of the room. As expected for a hospital room, there were few decorations, a private room at least brought with it the luxury of his own shower. Since he didn't have access to any of the castle's systems from his armor, he kept himself busy by working out in the center of the room. He did pushups and situ-ups for an hour before he finally cleaned himself off in the shower.

He spent a long time standing there with the water running over his skin before he finally turned off the tap and dried himself off. The clothes Virginia had left him were partially casual, consisting of a high-collared turtleneck sweater and some black cargo pants, and as she had assured him, they fit him like a glove. In any case, they allowed him to change into something more comfortable than a hospital gown after his shower. Around five o'clock, going by the digital display by his bedside, a man with pink eyes and lilac hair knocked on the door and brought him something to eat for dinner. Shiro didn't know what had happened to human civilization in the last eight hundred years, but he wasn't sure he wanted to find out, if how surprised the man had been when he thanked him for the food was any indication.

After two days of dreamless slumber, his sleep that night was restless as he ran through different scenarios for what could have happened after the battle with Zarkon. Doubts and fears about the fate of his friends ran through his mind on a continuous loop until he awoke the next morning with bags under his eyes. He rubbed them as he looked out at the light coming in through the windows, slightly dimmer than the day before. The man who brought him dinner had explained that because the moon was tidally locked to Earth, the nights on Luna, as Earth's natural satellite was now called, typically lasted for about two weeks, followed by two weeks of sunlight. It would be a week before the moon was completely cut off from the sun, and the light faded a little more with each passing day.

Virginia returned after the pink-haired man had brought him breakfast, the holographic screen mounted on her arm displaying a video that he had never seen himself, but had heard described by Pidge several times since their arrival at the Castle of Lions.

"The Galaxy Garrison mission to the distant moon of Kerberos is missing, and all crew members are believed to be dead" the newscaster reported as the backdrop shifted from video footage of his old shuttle's launch to the press photos he had taken with the Holts before they left Earth. His name stared back at him from the screen underneath the old photo of himself in his Garrison uniform, his hair missing the white stripe it now sported after a year in captivity. "The Galaxy Garrison has said that the crash was presumably caused by pilot error. It is indeed a sad day for all humanity."

"Am I correct in assuming that's you?" she asked as she closed out the video. He nodded, knowing that he'd have to tell her at least some of the truth. He didn't have much time to dwell on his thoughts before Virginia started asking more questions. "So how did a pilot the Old Earth media claimed was dead turn up alive in armor that does not appear to be of human make?" From her choice of words about his armor, Shiro could tell she already suspected alien abduction. Not that unbelievable since she's dealing with time travel, he thought to himself.

"It's a long story," he answered sadly as he glanced at his paladin armor still stacked in the corner. "And I know you need an explanation, but right now, I don't feel like talking about it." Virginia nodded.

"I understand," she replied. "I assume reports of your death were either premature or else falsified for the sake of a government cover up?"

"Something like that," Shiro responded. "And before you ask, I have no idea where the rest of my crewmembers are. We were separated after our capture." A spark of curiosity lit up in Virginia's eyes, and Shiro winced at having unwittingly confirmed her suspicions.

"Considering you're a time traveler, I should have expected alien abduction had something to do with it," she commented. "I understand if you don't want to talk about your time in captivity, but I do need to know whether or not they currently pose a threat to Earth." Shiro bit his lip as he tried to frame how to move back

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I was a prisoner of the Galra Empire for about a year before a resistance group helped me escape. Since Earth obviously wasn't conquered in the last eight hundred years, I'm assuming they've been defeated for good, but I can't be completely certain unless I either make it back to my own time, or humanity contacts other alien civilizations any time soon."

"So your circumstances are more like Samurai Jack than Flight of the Navigator, then," Virginia mused. "If there really is an afterlife from which the dead watch over the living, my older brother Claudius must be laughing at us right now." Shiro quirked an eyebrow at the reference to a film that came out eight hundred fifty-four years ago.

"Aren't those a little before your time?" he asked with an amused chuckle, feeling a pang of sympathy for Virginia's late brother.

"Claudius loved Old Earth science fiction back when he was still alive," she explained with a laugh. "He let me watch some of his old films and serials with him when he felt they were appropriate for a ten-year-old. Samurai Jack was one of my favorites, and Navigator was a guilty pleasure of his." Her mask of professionalism dropped for a moment to reveal her grief for her late brother, before she carefully shelved her emotions once more. Wanting to offer belated condolences but not knowing what to say, Shiro reached out and put his hand on her shoulder as a show of support. She thanked him for his concern before steering the conversation towards helping Shiro blend in with modern society, starting with the ways that human civilization had changed since the twenty-first century.

"When the first colonists ventured forth from Earth to make their home on the moon in the year twenty-fifty," she began, taking on a tone that clearly indicated she was reciting a history textbook passage that virtually everyone knew by heart. "They created a hierarchy for labor. In time, they improved this hierarchy through genetic and surgical manipulation. The result was a color-coded society of perfect efficiency, dominated by a superior breed of humanity – the Golds. It was they who rebelled against Earth, conquered her, and sowed the seeds of our society across the solar system." Shiro frowned as he thought through the implications of her words to decide on what question to ask next.

"Meaning that all of the different Color classes had distinct physical features marking them as a member of that Color, right?" he asked.

"Correct," Virginia answered. "There are other differences in physique and bone density, but the primary identifying traits for a Color are hair and eye color, both of which correspond to one's caste, with a few exceptions. Obsidians have white hair, for example, while Blues are bald, and as artists, Violets are permitted to dye theirs."

"What are the different Colors?" Shiro inquired, curious to know despite his uncertainty.

"At the bottom are the Reds, unskilled manual laborers," Virginia replied. "Above them are Pinks, bred for unparalleled beauty and trained in the arts of physical pleasure. Next are the Obsidians, a monstrous race engineered for war. Then come the Browns, household servants and other menial laborers. After that are Grays, society's military forces and police officers. Then Oranges, our mechanics. Next come Violets, the creatives, as I mentioned. Following them are the Greens, the programmers and developers of technology." At this, Shiro let out a quiet laugh as he imagined Pidge with green hair and eyes in this era.

"What's so funny?" his rescuer asked.

"Matt's sister Katie was always good with technology," he explained. "I was just imagining her as a Green right then." Virginia chuckled, understanding the sentiment even if she didn't fully grasp the context before she continued her explanation for the Colors.

"Above Green are the Yellows, doctors and scientists," she went on. "Then come Blues, pilots and navigators. After them are Coppers, our administrators, lawyers, and bureaucrats. Next are priests and priestesses, the Whites. Following them are Silvers, our civilization's bankers, innovators, and financiers. And at the top are the Golds, the fiercely intelligent rulers of humanity, like my father, Nero au Augustus, ArchGovernor of Mars." Shiro let out a whistle at this revelation, understanding now why Mustang was so concerned about him being dissected for not fitting into any of the categories society had molded over the last eight centuries.

Once she finished explaining the hierarchy, Virginia pulled a device she referred to as a dataPad out of her bag and showed him how to attach it to his arm. As he did so, she poured a glass of the strange fluid she'd brought with her, explaining that it was a tonic designed to allow one to absorb, comprehend, and retain information faster. All Shiro would have to do was take some before going to bed and speed listen to audio-book files as he fell asleep and after a few nights he'd wake up completely caught up on the last eight centuries of history, literature, and culture. Shiro couldn't help but marvel at how far human technology had come in the last few hundred years. Something like that would have been impossible back in his own time. He briefly contemplated bringing some tech back with him only for logic to rear its head and shoot that thought down. He didn't want to create any paradoxes.

"I don't know what to say," he said finally as she prepared to leave for lunch, promising to bring hair dye and contact lenses so he wouldn't stick out in crowds when she returned after her afternoon meetings. "I'm grateful for all that you're doing for me, but… why? You said yourself if I'm discovered, I'll be dissected. Why risk everything to help me?" While Shiro was fine putting his life on the line every day protecting innocents from the Galra, he was justifiably cautious now that he was in this situation alone. There was no Castle of Lions to fall back to if things went south. No Voltron to save the day when things looked bleak. He was on his own, and while he'd accept any help he was given, he had to make sure that offers of aid were genuine.

"As a Gold, my tutors and instructors always taught me to be strong and ruthless.
Virginia replied. "But I had always learned differently from that. Rather than an endless river of stories about strong men claiming glory for their own heads, I was raised on tales of heroes who protected the weak. My father is a cold cruel man, but I will always be grateful that I was able to spend my childhood at the estate of Kavax au Telemanus, who taught me to do the right thing. So, I'm going to do everything I can to keep you alive until we can find a way to send you back to your own era."

Mustang's explanation of the color hierarchy comes directly from the Red Rising website.

Background info time:

Virginia au Augustus goes by the nickname "Mustang" because at The Institute (which is basically college for Golds that consists of year-long Spartan-style war games with Game of Thrones-levels of technology divided into houses Harry Potter-style), her house was the only one provided with cavalry horses and she was the first character from her house to be introduced. She earned the nickname Mustang, and it stuck, so that all of the main heroes of Red Rising refer to her as such for the remainder of the series. Shiro isn't as close with Mustang as the rest of the cast is, so she won't be referred to by her nickname when a chapter is focused on him until later in the story.

Her older brother Claudius was murdered in a duel years before the series even began, and other than Nero seeing him as the perfect son, we know very little about him. So for the sake of this story I came up with the idea that he was an aficionado of old pre-Conquering era sci-fi shows to explain how Mustang even thought to consider time travel as a possible explanation for Shiro's appearance.

In the centuries since The Conquering, eugenics and genetic engineering has made the Colors so physically different (The average Red is about 4 ft, while Golds average around 6ft 6, Obsidians range from 6 to 8 ft, etc.) that the conception of a child between two Colors is impossible without further genetic manipulation.

Terminology:

The Compact: The constitution of society in the Red Rising universe.